Remember when a Windows 10 update came with an incredibly annoying side effect: deleting your user data? Microsoft has somehow managed to do it again, although it doesn’t appear to be as problematic as the first time. The most recent security update, KB4532693, is to blame, and Microsoft has already acknowledged the issue.
Released last week, KB4532693 reset some Windows 10 desktop and Start menu items to default, per TechRadar, removing wallpapers, icons, and shortcuts in the process. While these can be easily fixed, there’s one other annoying issue with the update. It also removed files from the desktop, which is a pretty popular storage location.
The files aren’t gone for good and can be recovered. It turns out they may have moved to a different profile. Well, techincally it’s the old profile you had before, but Microsoft just created a newer one for you.
Microsoft confirmed the issue to Windows Latest, and is working on a fix:
Microsoft is aware of this known issue and our engineers are working diligently to find a solution for it
It’s unclear why Windows 10 boots with a temporary user profile after the KB4532693 update to begin with, but a fix should be out soon enough. There’s a way to fix the issue yourself before Microsoft issues a new update of its own, but it might not be user-friendly enough to make it worth your time to attempt it:
[We] create a new local account user then transfer the personal files from the temporary account to the new account. After that, we can just delete the temporary account.
The good news is that your files should still be there for you to recover. Alternatively, you could resort to an app to attempt the recovery of deleted files if you haven’t backed them up recently. According to the same Windows Latest, some users haven’t been able to find the personal files that disappeared.
